Help Without Help

This is spooky. We could call it haunting. It’s the horror of new support online.

The technical support staff are well-intentioned and very skilled about their product and software. But they are answering all my questions from their perspective and experience and NOT from mine. Arrrrrrrgh!

The typical customer "identification process" is bad if it skips from the human to the technical without a thoughtful pause.

Trick or Treat

Instead of finding out the substantive learning issue that I have, the support staff bang out their quota of tickets with smart and partial solutions I barely understand at all.

You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know

I'm sure you've heard this most famous one of all,

"Uninstall and Reinstall and get back to me if you still have the problem."

What? I asked a question in my online ticket about how something is supposed to work in their software. Things in their product weren't working as they used to nor as I expected them to perform. That’s reasonable? I think. I’m a long-time, paying customer. It isn’t in their documentation. I looked. I can’t find it anyway.

Please, at least point me to that before you close my ticket.

God forbid. There is no answer yet in the support database. Ok. Tell me.

"I don't know" is a valid answer.

You've probably noticed the "Help without Help" effect yourself. Perhaps as the local AutoCAD Civil 3D support geek you may even do it to others around you.

I work at trying not to do it, but I not immune myself. I have to be very careful to put myself into the other person's shoes.

Forget What I Know

What do they need to know now...not tomorrow, next week, or next month.